


Master

by maroongrad



Category: Dracula - Bram Stoker, Hellsing
Genre: Angst, prisoner, prisoner to servant, vampire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28236363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maroongrad/pseuds/maroongrad
Summary: I'd read a request somewhere about wanting a story about Integra meeting Abraham. I'd seen a few with Anderson doing so...but...nothing for Integra. And this popped into my head and ended up getting typed up! I'll be posting it on FFN and AO3.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Master

Alucard was happy tonight. No, not happy, thought Integra. Mellow. Less homicidal. Calmer. It was a nice change but also a worrisome one. Alucard's emotions were pretty consistently some level of annoying, possessive, argumentative, and disrespectful, and this sort of serene evening was NOT typical. After nearly half an hour of watching him, stretched out on the couch in her office, half-leaning on the opposite arm, hands folded on his stomach and eyes staring unfocused at the fire, she gave up. Something had made him far too happy. Maybe he finally got one of the humans he perpetually pursued to agree to a tryst, maybe Walter gave him a snack of fresh blood, maybe he'd managed something that he knew would piss her off to no end at some point in the future when she discovered it, and was simply basking in the glow of accomplishment of a job well done. Might as well bite the bullet, she wasn't getting a damn thing done worrying about why her vampire was NOT bothering her when in her office.

"Alucard? You seem rather content tonight." A noncommital hum. "Mind telling me why?" His head lifted, looking down the couch and over his feet, face just visible over the other armrest, a look of faint surprise on his face.

"Merely a date with a pleasant association." Well, that could mean any of a number of things, and Integra's eye lifted as she waited, silently demanding an explanation. He smiled at her, an oddly warm look on his face. "The date at which I began my service with your grandfather." 

"This is when you were caught?" She'd never actually asked, in fact she wasn't really certain of the date other than late 1800s. 

"No, he'd defeated me before...months before. This was when I truly became his servant."

"You weren't before?" This was a bit of history she'd never actually learned. The first few journals had information on how he was captured, with plenty of notes on his predation of Lucy and Mina, and had gone into how her grandfather had crafted the controls, but she'd focused on the more recent ones after getting the basics. She knew how the seals worked to restrict his powers, and what Alucard had been like before them...but not much else. Still, it didn't really make sense. "He'd defeated you, you're a vampire, he didn't destroy you...weren't you already his servant?" After all, he'd taught her this long ago! And it was much of the reason that she trusted him so. Trusted him to challenge her, to push her, and to annoy her to no end, but never to attack or betray her.

\---v---v----

After a female vampire was killed with another female vampire serving her, she'd asked Alucard. Females turned males, and vice versa...how had a female come to have a female offspring. Alucard had looked a bit surprised; it was obvious to him, after all, and she'd learned about what happened when a vampire defeated another. Usually, they were dinner. Sometimes, though, the victor chose not to kill the other vampire, and to instead take that vampire as a servant under their protection. It could be a wise move; a servant would be an extra layer of protection, far better than a ghoul, and far better company as well. If badly injured, a servant vampire could be trusted to take the vampire to shelter and protect it as they healed. She'd asked, then, wondering why the servant didn't just kill them and escape.

"Kill them? They are, well, family! They owe their lives to the older vampire, have been taken into their home, cared for, trained if they are still young, protected. If the older vampire was truly cruel, a servant would be far less inclined to serve, doing the least possible to fulfill their duties, at which point the older vampire might as well have just destroyed them to begin with. No... a vampire servant will stay with their Master. If the Master is destroyed, and the servant is sufficiently strong, they'll often stay with the Master's offspring, protecting and teaching them." It had left her with quite a bit to think on, showing yet another facet of vampire society she'd never have guessed on her own.

\--v--v--

"Mmmm...no... I'm not sure what changed, but this night was different. Before...I had not been...welcome, to put it mildly. He had beaten me, but was a captor, not a Master. This was the night when it changed." A slight smile at the memory; it must have been a fond one. "I had expected him to at best ignore me, most likely beat me, at worst decide that more experimentation was in order. Instead, I got a bottle of fresh, nearly-warm blood and his company for the next few hours. It was the first evening I hadn't been threatened or hurt...by the time he left for his bed, I was not only unchained, undamaged, and no longer locked away, but had been given a coffin to rest in." His head turned, and Alucard's eyes gave a lazy red blink to the fire. "I have served since, and am happy to continue to do so." Something he'd said caught her attention.

"You don't know why?"

"No...only that he came down that evening and approached me as a Master. He never said why. I wasn't going to ask and perhaps have him change his mind when reminded...and once I was secure in my position, I never thought to ask. I suspect he simply finally realized that I wasn't dangerous, not to him." His voice had gotten quieter, and he'd gone back to gazing at the fire. Integra decided to let him stare for a bit...now she was curious! Every journal every Hellsing had written since Alucard was captured was kept in a small, fire-proof room behind the bookshelf in the office. Easy to access, safe from casual sight and theft. Standing, she pushed the shelf behind her, heard the snick of the lock releasing, and pushed the entire bookshelf back into the wall. There had been a small closet there, and the door had been changed to shelves and the walls lined with metal, and in there was most of a wall of journals. She'd read most of the last few decades' journals, the very first two, and bits of the others...and now she grabbed the third one.

Her grandfather's writing had been abyssmal, but she'd managed before and she would again. Closing up the room, she sat again at her desk, and opened the cracked leather cover of the book. Opening it, she found that it fell open to a page near the beginning...and there was a folded paper in between the pages. That's what had served as a bookmark and caused it to open on that specific page. Odd, none of the other journals had anything extra in them! Old, thin browned paper, the folds ready to fall apart, and she carefully and gently spread it on her desk. In the background, she saw Alucard rise and meander off, most likely to get a bit to drink, but ignored it for the mystery of the paper. She may well be the first person to see that since her grandfather had enclosed it in his journal.

It was not likely to be something so prosaic as a grocery list, not tucked into the book. And when she read it, she could only stare in shock. Short, simple, and to the point, finishing with a short cantrip and a brown stain. A glance back in the journal found the needle that had rolled down into the crease, and a few moments later, her own drop of fresh, rich red blood fell on the blood left by her ancestor a century before.

\--v--v---

The chair was much less comfortable; this one had no flexible back, no cushions, and was far larger than the one she'd used. The fire burned, but the shelves beside it were missing many of the books she was used to. The room smelled different, somehow. Old, dusty, missing the sharp clean smells of fresh air and coffee. The simple curtains she'd selected had been replaced by ugly olive-green monstrosities shot through with gold thread. The desk in front of her remained unchanged, but instead of her laptop and mug of coffee, she was looking at an old pad of paper, with a fountain pen and inkpot resting near the top of it, and a newspaper folded to her right. The date showed her that she had moved into the past...and the tall man scowling down at her, fury in his blue eyes, could only be her grandfather. 

"Hello grandfather." She'd taken him by surprised; he'd been about to speak but choked a bit in surprise!

"I haven't a child, much less a grandchild." The voice growled at her. "I don't know what sort of devil or witch you are, but I will be sending you away to your devil master now!" He grabbed the cross hanging on his neck, pulled it back in a fist to strike her...and then stopped, staring at her tie, then glancing at her hand. His other hand rose slowly to touch the same pin at his neck, and as it did so, the golden ring on his hand flashed. It was a perfect match to the one decorating the thin gold wire of her bracelet; far too big for her to wear, it had found a temporary home on the bracelet until it could be given to a son or daughter. It held the Hellsing crest, and a tiny chip of red ruby, and on the inside an engraved "Hellsing" swooped across the gold in fine, tiny copperplate. 

She took advantage of the pause to speak, and Abraham found himself listening. She had a trained speaking voice, and plenty of confidence...and she wore a cross and a ring that he wore himself.

"Yes, granddaughter. You left a message in your journal, with instructions on how to travel back to this time. I'm not truly here," and her hand waved across the desk, barely rustling the papers and causing the pen to roll the slightest fraction of an inch, "but am "here" enough to speak with you." The strange woman stared into his eyes, and he saw his own eyes looking back. Her lips twitched. "The cantrip you found earlier does, indeed, work. And blood calls to blood, and brought me here to you. The instructions included directions to do so immediately, so that I would find you here. Make sure that you include that in the message." 

He had indeed found the spell she'd mentioned. Not terribly useful, really...one couldn't change the past using it, and could barely affect the past they traveled to. It was so limited... you could only travel to your past in the same place you stood, and only if someone of your blood waited for you nearby, and had sent a drop of their blood to you in the future, too. Unless you knew that the person you needed to speak to was within a few feet of where you were going, and had their blood? You'd go nowhere at all...and the spell would last only a short time, too. Minutes. And that, that was the thing that made him believe her. He'd read the spell, wondered if one of his descendents would use it, just a few days earlier. And...here she was. It...made sense, though he'd really thought the spell either another false bit of drivel or nearly useless. It appeared he'd be writing it down in a message in his journal, then!

"I haven't much time. You've been treating Alucard as a prisoner, and he can and should be far more than that. I know you haven't treated him well...he mentioned experiments and beatings. You've never once interacted with him as other than a captor with a prisoner, because frankly if you had, you'd have learned this already. Go down to see him and speak with him." She frowned at him. "He's practically raised me the last few years, he's going to be-" and...vanished.

\--v--v----

Between one blink and the next, her grandfather had disappeared and she was seated in her comfortable chair, staring at the familiar room. She sat unmoving, dumbfounded...she'd just seen her grandfather. Her grandfather. Not just a portrait of an old man, but a towering one just barely past his prime, vigorous and violent, a much bigger man than she'd expected. Yes, he'd looked the part of a Hellsing, a confident person, competent, and capable of besting a vampire. With a blink, she folded the paper, wiped the needle, and replaced them both in the journal. Curiousity pulled her back to reading...what HAD happened after her talk?

\---v---v-----

The door at the top of the stairs creaked open and slammed shut, and Dracula - Alucard now - jerked. It was silent as a tomb here, and he should know. Far below and far away from the household above him, he was surrounded by a deep silence and the sudden violent sound of the door crashed into the calm quiet he'd managed to immerse himself in. He hurt, he was exhausted, and he admitted to himself that he was more melancholy than he had even been since his death. Nothing had gone right, he had lost everything, and the one who had defeated him hadn't killed him...but had treated him with nothing but hatred and scorn and abuse after abuse.

And was coming back to deal out more pain. His hands still throbbed, the alchemy on the back and the sorcery used by M- no. Not Master. Van Helsing - had burned into his hands and his mind. What little power he'd managed to keep, hoping to use it to escape, had been thoroughly blocked from him. Starved, exhausted, injured, miserable, and now with no access to any of his abilities, and what little hope he had of things improving had died when his hands burned. Back to the wall, he curled into a corner, near-skeletal arms on bony knees and face hidden in them, waiting to find out what new cruelty Van Helsing had in mind. The door opened...and he cringed, waiting to feel a kick, a whip, or even to have his hair grabbed and to be drug away into the lab.

\---v---v---

The lantern light picked out the form huddled in a corner. Alucard looked terrible; he'd put forth quite a bit of effort to weaken the monster, and it had worked. When he'd finally bound its powers, it had been too weak to fight him and his assistants after so many weeks of starvation, unable to access its coffin, chained and beaten. He hadn't bothered to chain it again, wanting the bastard to understand just how much power he had over it. She'd said to speak with it...well, it wasn't going to be speaking easily. The throat had been damaged as it struggled against its collar, and the beast was too dry to do more than wheeze. If he wanted speech, he'd have to let it recover a little bit...he'd never cared what it had to say before. But...his granddaughter told him to speak to it. And so, he had brought it a bottle of blood, freshly drawn from two of his household servants.

He'd have to feed it. The vampire wasn't likely to have the ability to hold a bottle; he'd blistered those hands to the bone putting on the sigils that turned it into little more than a human in ability. Crouching beside it, he grabbed the hair...to see it flinch away. Good. It had learned its place. He pulled the hair back, tilting the face up, smirking at the closed eyes. The murdering bastard was frightened of him to the point it didn't want to look at him? That appeared to be the case. He used the thumb on the hand holding the bottle to pull the mouth open and with no ceremony at all began to dump the contents into the bottle. 

The vampire gulped it down, swallowing as fast as he could pour. Abraham was vaguely irritated to notice the lack of choking; any human would be sputtering and gasping, but no, the undead didn't breathe and it was simply eating. Bottle emptied, he shook it slightly to get a few more sticky drops out, then released the vampire's hair, dropping its head onto its knees. It hadn't been fed since he'd first hauled its staked carcass down here, and as he watched, the visible hand healed. Not entirely, but thin skin now covered the charred bones that had peaked through it before. Moving the curtain of filthy gray hair, he was also pleased to note the galls on the neck healing, swelling going down, deep groove rising even with the rest of the skin. 

And then he saw the eyes. Not sparking with hate, not glaring...just...stunned. Stunned, and soft, and wondering. A slow and peaceful blink. He dropped the hair back down, the eyes following the path of his hand, but...just staring, then rising again to look back at his own eyes. There was...no threat. No aggression. No hate. Just a deeply exhausted, bewildered gaze. Eyes narrowed, he reached again for the hair, smoothing it back from the neck and off the beast's cheek. The red eyes drooped slightly and the faintest sigh was heard. It...enjoyed this? Curious, he repeated the movement, this time deliberately stroking the hair, running his hand across the crown and to the back of the head, fingers separating the strands as they moved through them. 

The vampire...melted. Tension dropped from its frame, shoulders relaxing, head sagging across the arms, eyes half-closed and then the lids falling closed entirely. Curiouser and curiouser. Reaching out with both arms, Abraham cupped the face in his hands, lifting and turning it to see the monster's expression more clearly. It was astoundingly peaceful, with the sort of gentle beauty of one who was asleep, all muscles relaxed and lashes lying thick and dark on the cheeks. And then the head moved...as the vampire nuzzled a cheek into his palm, the eyes now barely open, gazing unfocused towards him. 

It was what the vampire murmured next that had him lurching backwards, dropping from a crouch to sitting suddenly on the cold floor and in shock. Unprovoked, undemanded, unexpected...but unmistakably, quietly there.

"Master."


End file.
